Rhododendron Quotes

Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the lane, ways that would not involve walking down our drive.

It is also then that I wish I believed in some sort of life after life, that in another universe, maybe on a small red planet where we have not legs but tails, where we paddle through the atmosphere like seals, where the air itself is sustenance, composed of trillions of molecules of protein and sugar and all one has to do is open one's mouth and inhale in order to remain alive and healthy, maybe you two are there together, floating through the climate. Or maybe he is closer still: maybe he is that gray cat that has begun to sit outside our neighbor's house, purring when I reach out my hand to it; maybe he is that new puppy I see tugging at the end of my other neighbor's leash; maybe he is that toddler I saw running through the square a few months ago, shrieking with joy, his parents huffing after him; maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist. It isn't only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.

Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.

You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment. Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It's not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can't even remember your name.

He was telling an interesting anecdote full of exciting words like "encyclopedia" and "rhododendron".

Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.

Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.

May, and after a rainy spring We walk streets gallant with rhododendrons.

Last apricot light flooded landward and brought their shadows uphill, past the lifeguard towers, into terraces of bougainvillea, rhododendrons, and ice plant.

I lay awake for hours in my twin bed next to the other, empty bed, feeling and hearing the spruces, the hemlocks, the rhododendron scraping at the partly open window, the verdant mountain out there in the night, the burgeoning of nature that did not seem to include me. And when, my restless body asked my teeming brain, had I agreed to be excluded?

Suddenly I saw a clearing in the dark drive ahead, and a patch of sky, and in a moment the dark trees had thinned, the nameless shrubs had disappeared, and on either side of us was a wall of colour, blood-red, reaching far above our heads. We were amongst the rhododendrons. There was something bewildering, even shocking, about the suddenness of their discovery. The woods had not prepared me for them. They startled me with their crimson faces, massed one upon the other in incredible profusion, showing no leaf, no twig, nothing but the slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic, unlike any rhododendron plant I had seen before. I glanced at Maxim. He was smiling. 'Like them?' he said. I told him 'Yes,' a little breathlessly, uncertain whether I was speaking the truth or not, for to me a rhododendron was a homely, domestic thing, strictly conventional, mauve or pink in colour, standing one beside the other in a neat round bed. And these were monsters, rearing to the sky, massed like a battalion, too beautiful I thought, too powerful; they were not plants at all.

Once, I told a bitchy pop star that Luke had given me a case of rhododendrons.  Just to see what would happen.  She freaked out, and

There was certainly plenty to watch and listen to. The tree which Digory had noticed was now a full-grown beech whose branches swayed gently above his head. They stood on cool, green grass, sprinkled with daisies and buttercups. A little way off, along the river bank, willows were growing. On the other side tangles of flowering currant, lilac, wild rose, and rhododendron closed them in.

ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

THERE IS ONE type of honey you should avoid at all costs. Mad honey comes from bees that forage on rhododendrons and mountain laurel, and it’s full of poisonous grayanotoxins. It causes dizziness, nausea and vomiting, convulsions, cardiac disorders, and more.

We were amongst the rhododendrons. There was something bewildering, even shocking, about the suddenness of their discovery. The woods had not prepared me for them. They startled me with their crimson faces, massed one upon the other in incredible profusion, showing no leaf, no twig, nothing but the slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic, unlike any rhododendron plant I had seen before.

Father had stretched out his long legs and was tilting back in his chair. Mother sat with her knees crossed, in blue slacks, smoking a Chesterfield. The dessert dishes were still on the table. My sisters were nowhere in evidence. It was a warm evening; the big dining-room windows gave onto blooming rhododendrons. Mother regarded me warmly. She gave me to understand that she was glad I had found what I had been looking for, but that she and father were happy to sit with their coffee, and would not be coming down. She did not say, but I understood at once, that they had their pursuits (coffee?) and I had mine. She did not say, but I began to understand then, that you do what you do out of your private passion for the thing itself. I had essentially been handed my own life. In subsequent years my parents would praise my drawings and poems, and supply me with books, art supplies, and sports equipment, and listen to my troubles and enthusiasms, and supervise my hours, and discuss and inform, but they would not get involved with my detective work, nor hear about my reading, nor inquire about my homework or term papers or exams, nor visit the salamanders I caught, nor listen to me play the piano, nor attend my field hockey games, nor fuss over my insect collection with me, or my poetry collection or stamp collection or rock collection. My days and nights were my own to plan and fill.

and the goodman beheld this apparition, which had bare feet and a tattered petticoat, running about among the flower-beds distributing life around her. The sound of the watering-pot on the leaves filled Father Mabeuf's soul with ecstasy. It seemed to him that the rhododendron was happy now.

Most people liked it best in the early spring, when the woods down to the river seemed to shift almost before one’s eyes from snowdrop white to daffodil yellow to the shimmer of bluebells—when the rooks cawed furiously in the beeches, the garden woke to life in a splurge of rhododendrons, and the young lambs caught their heads five times a day in the fencing down the drive. I shall always remember it with the profoundest gratitude, though, as it was that May, that last May, in the last of my old summers.

A wise friend told me that we all could use more than one set of parents—our relations with the original set are too intense, and need dissipating.

The hemlock tree is named spruce-pine, while spruce is he-balsam, balsam itself is she-balsam, laurel is ivy, and rhododendron is laurel.

Mrs. Lawson, she called. I've changed my mind. I'm going to the ball. Heat your iron. But first, run outside and get the pink gown off the rhododendron.

red-trunked rhododendron trees looked like so many writhing russet snakes. In some places the forest floor was carpeted crimson with fallen rhododendron petals.

We were amongst the rhododendrons. There was something bewildering, even shocking, about the suddenness of their discovery. The woods had not prepared me for them. They startled me with their crimson faces, massed one upon the other in incredible profusion, showing no leaf, no twig, nothing but the slaughterhouse red, luscious and fantastic, unlike any rhododendron plant I had seen before.

THERE IS ONE type of honey you should avoid at all costs. Mad honey comes from bees that forage on rhododendrons and mountain laurel, and it’s full of poisonous grayanotoxins. It causes dizziness, nausea and vomiting, convulsions, cardiac disorders, and more. Symptoms last for twenty-four hours, and although rarely, if left untreated, can be fatal. It has been used in biological warfare as far back as 399

At the North Carolina border, the dull landscape ended abruptly, as if by decree. Suddenly the countryside rose and fell in majestic undulations, full of creeping thickets of laurel, rhododendron and palmetto.

Our water supply was meagre and my grandfather had deflected a considerable quantity of it to a pond on which, in the shelter of a grove of rhododendrons, he loved to row himself about. It was his escape from the land agent

Adults follow paths; children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way hundreds of times — or thousands. Perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths. To creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.

Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.

For a moment - only for a moment - when they were in the turning of the drive, between the tall rhododendrons and conifers, before the lodge became visible, he inclined his face towards her as if - but, no: he thought better of it and let her go.

I saw that the garden had obeyed the jungle law, even as the woods had done. The rhododendrons stood fifty feet high, twisted and entwined with bracken, and they had entered into alien marriage with a host of nameless shrubs, poor, bastard thing that clung about their roots as though conscious of their spurious origin. A lilac had mated with a copper beech, and to bind them yet more closely to one another the malevolent ivy, always an enemy to grace, had thrown her tendrils about the pair and made them prisoners.

To those who may have wisely kept their fancies within the boundary of the fields we know it is difficult for me to tell of the land to which Alveric had come, so that in their minds they can see that plain with its scattered trees and far off the dark wood out of which the palace of Elfland lifted those glittering spires, and above them and beyond them that serene range of mountains whose pinnacles took no colour from any light we see. Yet it is for this very purpose that our fancies travel far, and if my reader through fault of mine fail to picture the peaks of Elfland my fancy had better have stayed in the fields we know. Know then that in Elfland are colours more deep than are in our fields, and the very air there glows with so deep a lucency that all things seen there have something of the look of our trees and flowers in June reflected in water. And the colour of Elfland, of which I despaired to tell, may yet be told, for we have hints of it here; the deep blue of the night in Summer just as the gloaming has gone, the pale blue of Venus flooding the evening with light, the deeps of lakes in the twilight, all these are hints of that colour. And while our sunflowers carefully turned to the sun, some forefather of the rhododendrons must have turned a little towards Elfland, so that some of that glory dwells with them to this day.

In a valley shaded with rhododendrons, close to the snow line, where a stream milky with meltwater splashed and where doves and linnets flew among the immense pines, lay a cave, half, hidden by the crag above and the stiff heavy leaves that clustered below. The woods were full of sound: the stream between the rocks, the wind among the needles of the pine branches, the chitter of insects and the cries of small arboreal mammals, as well as the birdsong; and from time to time a stronger gust of wind would make one of the branches of a cedar or a fir move against another and groan like a cello. It was a place of brilliant sunlight, never undappled. Shafts of lemon-gold brilliance lanced down to the forest floor between bars and pools of brown-green shade; and the light was never still, never constant, because drifting mist would often float among the treetops, filtering all the sunlight to a pearly sheen and brushing every pine cone with moisture that glistened when the mist lifted. Sometimes the wetness in the clouds condensed into tiny drops half mist and half rain, which floated downward rather than fell, making a soft rustling patter among the millions of needles. There was a narrow path beside the stream, which led from a village-little more than a cluster of herdsmen's dwellings - at the foot of the valley to a half-ruined shrine near the glacier at its head, a place where faded silken flags streamed out in the Perpetual winds from the high mountains, and offerings of barley cakes and dried tea were placed by pious villagers. An odd effect of the light, the ice, and the vapor enveloped the head of the valley in perpetual rainbows.

Yes, I had dreamed of becoming a botanist, my entire life, really. I'd thought a great deal about the various species of maple and rhododendron while braiding challah, and I'd successfully planted a wisteria vine in a large pot and trained it over the awning of the bakery. And at night, after we closed shop, I volunteered at the New York Botanical Garden. Sweeping up cuttings and fallen leaves hardly seemed like work when it provided the opportunity to gaze into the eye of a Phoenix White peony or a Lady Hillingdon rose, with petals the color of apricot preserves. Yes, horticulture, not pastries, was my passion.

...maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist. It isn't only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.

I will believe anything about deer. Deer, in my opinion, are rats with antlers, roaches with split hooves, denizens of the dark primeval suburbs. Deer intensely suggest New Jersey. One of the densest concentrations of wild deer in the United States inhabits the part of New Jersey that, as it happens, I inhabit, too. Deer like people. They like to be near people. They like beanfields, head lettuce, and anybody’s apples. They like hibiscus, begonias, impatiens, azaleas, rhododendrons, boxwood, and wandering Jews. I once saw a buck with a big eight-point rocking-chair rack looking magnificent as he stood between two tractor-trailers in the Frito-Lay parking lot in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Deer use the sidewalks in the heart of Princeton.

Hidden under wild ferns on Howth. Below us bay sleeping sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion's head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you'll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweet and sour with spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft, warm, sticky gumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her; eyes, her lips, her stretched neck, beating, woman's breasts full in her blouse of nun's veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me. Me. And me now. Stuck, the flies buzzed.

And it's so pretty and secluded," went on Mrs. Digby, "with these glorious rhododendrons. Look how pretty they are, all sprayed with the water--like fairy jewels--and the rustic seat against those dark cypresses at the back. Really Italian. And the scent of the lilac is so marvellous!" Mr. Spiller knew that the cypresses were, in fact, yews, but he did not correct her. A little ignorance was becoming in a woman.

THERE IS ONE type of honey you should avoid at all costs. Mad honey comes from bees that forage on rhododendrons and mountain laurel, and it’s full of poisonous grayanotoxins. It causes dizziness, nausea and vomiting, convulsions, cardiac disorders, and more. Symptoms last for twenty-four hours, and although rarely, if left untreated, can be fatal. It has been used in biological warfare as far back as 399 b.c., to make Xenophon and the Greek army retreat from Persia. During the Third Mithridatic War in 65 b.c., citizens of Pontus placed mad honey on the route taken by Pompey’s soldiers, and when the enemy helped themselves to the treat, they were easily conquered. The secret weapon of mad honey, of course, is that you expect it to be sweet, not deadly. You’re deliberately attracted to it. By the time it messes with your head, with your heart, it’s too late.

I gazed at Nina and Theodore standing now before the window about to say their vows, or as Nina had phrased it, whatever words their hearts gave them at the moment, and I thought it just as well Mother was not here. She would’ve expected Nina to be in ivory lace, perhaps blue linen, carrying roses or lilies, but Nina had dismissed all of that as unoriginal and embarked on a wedding designed to shock the masses. She was wearing a brown dress made from free-labor cotton with a broad white sash and white gloves, and she’d matched up Theodore in a brown coat, a white vest, and beige pantaloons. She clutched a handful of white rhododendrons cut fresh from the backyard, and I noticed she’d tucked a sprig in the button hole of Theodore’s coat. Mother wouldn’t have made it past the brown dress, much less the opening prayer, which had been delivered by a Negro minister.

on either side of the narrow path stood azaleas and rhododendrons, not blood-coloured like the giants in the drive, but salmon, white, and gold, things of beauty and of grace, drooping their lovely, delicate heads in the soft summer rain. The air was full of their scent, sweet and heady, and it seemed to me as though their very essence had mingled with the running waters of the stream, and become one with the falling rain and the dank rich moss beneath our feet. There was no sound here but the tumbling of the little stream, and the quiet rain.

answer. It is also then that I wish I believed in some sort of life after life, that in another universe, maybe on a small red planet where we have not legs but tails, where we paddle through the atmosphere like seals, where the air itself is sustenance, composed of trillions of molecules of protein and sugar and all one has to do is open one’s mouth and inhale in order to remain alive and healthy, maybe you two are there together, floating through the climate. Or maybe he is closer still: maybe he is that gray cat that has begun to sit outside our neighbor’s house, purring when I reach out my hand to it; maybe he is that new puppy I see tugging at the end of my other neighbor’s leash; maybe he is that toddler I saw running through the square a few months ago, shrieking with joy, his parents huffing after him; maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist. It isn’t only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.

In January the lavender heather and white candytufts would bloom. February perked up the plum tree, and March would bring forth the daffodils, narcissus, and moonlight bloom. April lilacs and sugartuft would blossom along with the pink and bloodred rhododendrons, bluebells, and the apple tree in the victory garden. As the weather warmed, miniature purple irises would rise amid the volunteers of white alyssum and verbena. The roses, dahlias, white Shasta daisies, black-eyed Susans, and marigolds would bloom from late spring to early fall. Leota could see it. She knew exactly

The rhododendron, growing every minute somewhere in Alpine meadows, are far happier than we, for they know neither love, nor hate, nor the Perillo slipper system, and they don't even die, since all nature, excepting man, is one undying, indestructible whole. If one tree somewhere in the forest perishes from old age, before dying, it gives the wind so many seeds, and so many new trees grow up around it on the land, near and far, that the wold tree, especially the rhododendron doesn't mind dying. [...] Only man minds and feels bitter, and burdened as he is with egotistical pity for himself.

A lot of Britain’s secret war was fought at the end of long, sweeping drives like this one, running through neglected parks, between overgrown rhododendrons and dripping elms, to hidden country houses where codes were broken, special operations planned, the conversations of captured Nazi generals bugged, spies interrogated, agents trained. Kay had walked this drive for the past two years – always with an unwanted memory of school – and at the end of it stood Danesfield House, a mock-Elizabethan mansion, built at the turn of the century, as sparkling white as the icing on a wedding cake, with crenellated walls, steep red roofs and tall red-brick chimneys.

There is a flower that Bees prefer— And Butterflies—desire— To gain the Purple Democrat The Humming Bird—aspire— And Whatsoever Insect pass— A Honey bear away Proportioned to his several dearth And her—capacity— Her face be rounder than the Moon And ruddier than the Gown Or Orchis in the Pasture— Or Rhododendron—worn— She doth not wait for June— Before the World be Green— Her sturdy little Countenance Against the Wind—be seen— Contending with the Grass— Near Kinsman to Herself— For Privilege of Sod and Sun— Sweet Litigants for Life— And when the Hills be full— And newer fashions blow— Doth not retract a single spice For pang of jealousy— Her Public—be the Noon— Her Providence—the Sun— Her Progress—by the Bee—proclaimed— In sovereign—Swerveless Tune— The Bravest—of the Host— Surrendering—the last— Nor even of Defeat—aware— What cancelled by the Frost—

Redwoods are power because their great size is unmatched by any other trees, because they are ancient—many of these very specimens dating back centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ—because their extraordinary bark, as thick as armor and high in tannin, makes them all but impervious to insects, disease, and fire. They are power because they endure while all around them dies; men and animals pass among them and pass forever away; birds alight in their high branches and seem freer than anything rooted in rock and soil, but eventually, in a sudden quietness of the heart, the birds swoon off the sturdy limbs and thump to the ground or plummet from the sky, and the trees still soar; on the shadowed floors of these groves, sun-shy ferns and rhododendrons flourish season after season, but their immortality is illusory, for they too die, and new generations of

Summer Nocturne" Let us love this distance, since those who do not love each other are not seperaated. --Simone Weil Night without you, and the dog barking at the silence, no doubt at what's in the silence, a deer perhaps pruning the rhododendron or that racoon with its brilliant fingers testing the garbage can lid by the shed. Night I've chosen a book to help me think about the long that's in longing, "the space across which desire reaches." Night that finally needs music to quiet the dog and whatever enormous animal night itself is, appetite without limit. Since I seem to want to be hurt a little, it's Stan Getz and "It Never Entered My Mind," and to back him up Johnnie Walker Black coming down now from the cabinet to sing of its twelve lonely years in the dark. Night of small revelations, night of odd comfort. Starting to love this distance. Starting to feel how present you are in it.

There is a flower that Bees prefer — And Butterflies — desire — To gain the Purple Democrat The Humming Bird — aspire — And Whatsoever Insect pass — A Honey bear away Proportioned to his several dearth And her — capacity — Her face be rounder than the Moon And ruddier than the Gown Of Orchis in the Pasture — Or Rhododendron — worn — She doth not wait for June — Before the World be Green — Her sturdy little Countenance Against the Wind — be seen — Contending with the Grass — Near Kinsman to Herself — For Privilege of Sod and Sun — Sweet Litigants for Life — And when the Hills be full — And newer fashions blow — Doth not retract a single spice For pang of jealousy — Her Public — be the Noon — Her Providence — the Sun — Her Progress — by the Bee — proclaimed — In sovereign — Swerveless Tune — The Bravest — of the Host — Surrendering — the last — Nor even of Defeat — aware — When cancelled by the Frost —

shortly I should be able to live at peace in my cottage, with all the twenty four hours of the day to myself. Forty-six I am, and never yet had a whole week of leisure. What will 'for ever' feel like, and can I use it all? Please note its address from March onwards - Clouds Hill, Moreton, Dorset - and visit it, sometime, if you still stravage the roads of England in a great car. The cottage has two rooms; one, upstairs, for music (a gramophone and records) and one downstairs for books. There is a bath, in a demi-cupboard. For food one goes a mile, to Bovington (near the Tank Corps Depot) and at sleep-time I take my great sleeping bag, embroidered MEUM, and spread it on what seems the nicest bit of floor. There is a second bag, embroidered TUUM, for guests. The cottage looks simple, outside, and does no hurt to its setting which is twenty miles of broken heath and a river valley filled with rhododendrons run wild. I think everything, inside and outside my place, approaches perfection.

At the side of the house he scraped scales of fungus off the shingles. His basement smelled of mildew, his eyes stinging when he put in the laundry. The soil of his vegetable garden was too wet to till, the roots of the seedlings he’d planted washing away. The rhododendrons shed their purple petals too soon, the peonies barely opening before the stalks bent over, the blossoms smashed across the drenched ground. It was carnal, the smell of so much moisture. The smell of the earth’s decay. At night the rain would wake him. He heard it pelting the windows, washing the pitch of the driveway clean. He wondered if it was a sign of something. Of another juncture in his life. He remembered rain falling the first night he spent with Holly, in her cottage. Heavy rain the evening Bela was born. He began expecting it to leak through the bricks around the fireplace, to drip through the ceiling, to seep in below the doors. He thought of the monsoon coming every year in Tollygunge. The two ponds flooding, the embankment between them turning invisible.

Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck. Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun’s heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth below us bay sleeping: sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion’s head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you’ll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweetsour of her spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft warm sticky gumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her: eyes, her lips, her stretched neck beating, woman’s breasts full in her blouse of nun’s veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me. Me. And me now. Stuck, the flies buzzed.

The soldiers had, apparently, been given beehives filled with the honey of bees that had feasted on rhododendron and azalea, plants that produce neurotoxins so potent that they remain active in the honey. Those who eat the honey succumb to honey intoxication, also called grayanotoxin poisoning.

The following houseplants are poisonous, some in very small doses: Dumb cane, English ivy, foxglove, hyacinth bulbs (and leaves and flowers in quantity), hydrangea, iris rootstalk and rhizome, lily of the valley, philodendron, Jerusalem cherry. Outdoor plants that are poisonous include: Azalea, rhododendron, caladium, daffodil and narcissus bulbs, daphne, English ivy, foxglove, hyacinth bulbs (and leaves and flowers in quantity), hydrangea, iris rootstalk and rhizome, Japanese yew seeds and leaves, larkspur, laurel, lily of the valley, morning glory seeds, oleander, privet, rhubarb leaves, sweet peas (especially the “peas,” which are the seeds), tomato plant leaves, wisteria pods and seeds, yews. Holiday favorites holly and mistletoe, and to a lesser extent, poinsettia (which is irritating but not poisonous), are also on the danger list.

There is no bottom to the cake. I'm digging through the kind of soil that supports rhododendrons: it's that dark.

The next day we sat in Geir’s bedroom and wrote a love letter to Anne Lisbet. His parents’ house was identical to ours, it had exactly the same rooms, facing in exactly the same directions, but it was still unendingly different, because for them functionality reigned supreme, chairs were above all else comfortable to sit in, not attractive to look at, and the vacuumed, almost mathematically scrupulous, cleanliness that characterized our rooms was utterly absent in their house, with tables and the floor strewn with whatever they happened to be using at that moment. In a way, their lifestyle was integrated into the house. I suppose ours was, too, it was just that ours was different. For Geir’s father, sole control of his tools was unthinkable, quite the contrary, part of the point of how he brought up Geir and Gro was to involve them as much as possible in whatever he was doing. They had a workbench downstairs, where they hammered and planed, glued and sanded, and if we felt like making a soap-box cart, for example, or a go-kart, as we called it, he was our first port of call. Their garden wasn’t beautiful or symmetrical as ours had become after all the hours Dad had spent in it, but more haphazard, created on the functionality principle whereby the compost heap occupied a large space, despite its unappealing exterior, and likewise the stark, rather weed-like potato plants growing in a big patch behind the house where we had a ruler-straight lawn and curved beds of rhododendrons.

I continue my search for the place of origin of the bonsaied white pine. The forest’s plants evoke in me a feeling that reality has slipped. All is familiar wind in Japanese oaks and maples sounds as it does in the Americas: coarse grained and deep voiced in oaks, sandy and light in the thin-leaved maples. Yet when I attend to a visual detail- the contour of a leaf, the runnels in bark, the hue of a fruit, I am unmoored by strangeness. My mind is foundering in the geographic manifestation of plant evolution’s deep history. The plants of east Asia, seemingly so far from eastern North America, are in fact close kin to the plants of the mountain slopes of Appalachia, closer kin by far than the plants of the northwestern US, or of Florida, or the arid lands of the Southwest. On Miyajima, I walk with sumac, maple, ash, juniper, fir, oak, persimmon, and rhododendron. A few Asian specialties spice this thoroughly Appalachian community, curiosities like Japanese cedar, snake vines, and umbrella pines. The cedars intermingle their soft, extended sighs with the more familiar sounds of oak and maple.

His actions were neither good nor bad. They were like those of the rhododendron and the pine trees on the mountains that were his home, which flowered without thinking, then withered away without clinging, helpless to act as they were.

Grass was frosted white, rhododendron leaves curled tight, winter bare trees backlit by the moon.

Atop the nearby table, flowers I had picked from the estate garden only that morning, blooms of pink rhododendrons, creamy clematis and sprigs of jasmine, now wept from their vase in sad despondency. The fragrance of jasmine filled the closed room with a pungency that threatened suffocation.

Interestingly, some of these European extinct or relictual taxa are spreading today after re-introductions into parts of Europe (e.g. Morus mulberry, Tsuga, Cedrus cedar, Aesculus, Rhododendron ponticum), perhaps re-occupying ‘empty niches’ vacated earlier in the Quaternary.

began to take chase. But it was too late. Harry streaked like lightning out past the rhododendron bushes

While we are in the realm of comedy, it is worth recalling that one of the best and best-known episodes of the historical sitcom Blackadder, titled ‘Ink and Incapability’, confronts this very subject. Its fidelity to history is limited (Jane Austen is Johnson’s contemporary, and apparently has ‘a beard like a rhododendron’), but its representation of the perils of lexicography is just. The

Anna, did you just indirectly admit to liking me?” She drew in a swift breath and saw from his expression that while he was teasing, he was also… fishing. “Of course I like you. I like you entirely too well, and it is badly done of you to make me admit it.” “Well, let’s go from bad to worse, then, and you can tell me precisely why you like me.” “You are serious?” “I am. If you want, I will return the favor, though we have only several hours, and my list might take much longer than that.” He is flirting with me, Anna thought, incredulous. In his high-handed, serious way, the Earl of Westhaven had just paid her a flirtatious compliment. A lightness spread out from her middle, something of warmth and humor and guilty pleasure in it. “All right.” Anna nodded briskly. “I like that you are shy and honorable in the ways that count. I like that you are kind to Morgan, and to your animals, and old Nanny Fran. You are as patient with His Grace as a human can be, and you adore your brother. You are fierce, too, though, and can be decisive when needs must. You are also, I think, a romantic, and this is no mean feat for a man who spends half his days with commercial documents. Mostly, I like that you are good; you look after those who depend on you, you have gratitude for your blessings, and you don’t think enough of yourself.” Beside her, the earl was again silent. “Shall I go on?” Anna asked, feeling a sudden awkwardness. “You could not possibly pay me any greater series of compliments than you just have,” he said. “The man you describe is a paragon, a fellow I’d very much like to meet.” “See?” Anna nudged him with her shoulder. “You do not think enough of yourself. But I can also tell you the parts of you that irritate me—if that will make you feel better?” “I irritate you?” The earl’s eyebrows rose. “This should be interesting. You gave me the good news first, fortifying me for more burdensome truths, so let fly.” “You are proud,” Anna began, her tone thoughtful. “You don’t think your papa can manage anything correctly, and you won’t ask your brothers nor mother nor sisters even, for help with things directly affecting them. I wonder, in fact, if you have anybody you would call a friend.” “Ouch. A very definite ouch, Anna. Go on.” “You have forgotten how to play,” Anna said, “how to frolic, though I cannot fault you for a lack of appreciation for what’s around you. You appreciate; you just don’t seem to… indulge yourself.” “I see. And in what should I indulge myself?” “That is for you to determine,” she replied. “Marzipan has gone over well, I think, and sweets in general. You have indulged your love of music by having Val underfoot. As to what else brings you pleasure, you would be the best judge of that.” The earl turned down a shady lane lined with towering oaks and an understory of rhododendrons in vigorous bloom. “It was you,” he said. “Before Val moved in, I thought it was a neighbor playing the piano late in the evenings, but it was you. Were you playing for me?” Anna glanced off to the park beyond the trees and nodded.

The Time Machine was left deserted on the turf among the rhododendrons.

From Shanghai, Meyer had sent seeds and cuttings of oats, millet, a thin-skinned watermelon, and new types of cotton. The staff of Fairchild's office watched with anticipation each time one of Meyer's shipments were unpacked. There were seeds of wild pears, new persimmons, and leaves of so-called Manchurian spinach that America's top spinach specialist would declare was the best America had ever seen. Meyer had delivered the first samples of asparagus ever to officially enter the United States. In 1908, few people had seen a soybean, a green legume common in central China. Even fewer people could have imagined that within one hundred years, the evolved descendants of soybeans that Meyer shipped back would cover the Midwest of the United States like a rug. Soybeans would be applied to more diverse uses than any other crop in history, as feed for livestock, food for humans (notably vegetarians), and even a renewable fuel called biodiesel. Meyer also hadn't come empty-handed. He had physically brought home a bounty, having taken from China a steamer of the Standard Oil Company that, unlike a passenger ship, allowed him limitless cargo and better onboard conditions for plant material. He arrived with twenty tons, including red blackberries, wild apricots, two large zelkova trees (similar to elms), Chinese holly shrub, twenty-two white-barked pines, eighteen forms of lilac, four viburnum bushes that produced edible red berries, two spirea bushes with little white flowers, a rhododendron bush with pink and purple flowers, an evergreen shrub called a daphne, thirty kinds of bamboo (some of them edible), four types of lilies, and a new strain of grassy lawn sedge.

The Island’. The Island was a cluster of four oak trees in the centre of the garden skirted by rhododendron bushes.

How Ella Knows Jeffrey Bean Ella’s hands know she’s alive today. Her piano is drenched in sunlight, and she spends the morning coaxing hums from its belly. She has made a pet of the wind, and she lets it in through the screen door, feeds it dried blooms from a rhododendron. She thinks about all the mirrors in the houses on her block. Then she crosses the street to her neighbor’s yellow door, peers through the mail slot. It’s dark in there, and all she sees is a stack of blue plates on a table. Where are the secret drawers filled with cigarettes and diaries? Where are the boxes of pliers and hammers, the screws flexing their tiny shoulders? The needles and gum? When a spider drifts up toward the ceiling, the afternoon stops moving. Ella stares for a long time. Then she blinks, and the leaves go back to sizzling.

When I was ten we moved seven miles outside the city, out past the Christmas-tree farms and the hiking trails of Spencer Butte Park to a house in the woods. It sat on nearly five acres of land, where flocks of wild turkeys roamed picking for insects in the grass and my dad could drive his riding mower in the nude if he wanted to, shielded by thousands of ponderosa pines, no neighbors for miles. Out back, there was a clearing where my mother grew rhododendrons and kept the lawn kempt. Beyond it the land gave way to sloping hills of stiff grass and red clay. There was a man-made pond filled with muddy water and soft silt, and salamanders and frogs to chase after, catch, and release. Blackberry bramble grew wild and in the early summer, during the burning season, my father would take to it with a large pair of gardening shears and clear new pathways between the trees to form a circuit he could round on his dirt bike. Once a month he’d ignite the burn piles he’d gathered, letting me squeeze the lighter fluid onto their bases, and we’d admire his handiwork as the six-foot bonfires went up in flames.

How beautiful your eyes, that fuse the cadence of a rainbow with the sapphire skies as rhododendrons stand side by side. O’ my dear valentine!

Brandt stood at the gate as a garden club arrived at his nursery. One of the women reached over the fence and picked a rhododendron flower. Brandt immediately closed the gate and told the group to go home.

Life hit him with the biggest burden it could find but yet it couldn’t knock him down. He is smiling as a little Nepali boy with rhododendron flowers in his hands high up in the Himalayas and is making everybody around him cheerful and calm.

Enormous hydrangeas with vibrant pink sponge-like blooms, rhododendrons and impatiens, tall spears of flowering oyster plants jostled together with Jurassic-looking philodendron leaves and tree ferns, a mixed bag all tied by a wild creeper with bell-shaped blue flowers. The damp smell of the garden reminded Jess of places she'd visited in Cornwall, like St. Just in Roseland, where fertile ground spoke of layers of different generations, civilizations past. At last, beyond the tangled greenery, Jess glimpsed the jutting white chimneys of a large roof. She realized she was holding her breath. She turned a final corner, just like Daniel Miller had done on his way to meet Nora, and there it was. Grand and magnificent, yet even from a distance she could see that the house was in a state of disrepair. It was perched upon a stone plinth that rose about a meter off the ground. A clinging ficus with tiny leaves had grown to cover most of the stones and moss stained the rest, so that the house appeared to sit upon an ocean of greenery. Jess was reminded of the houses in fairy tales, hidden and then forgotten, ignored by the human world only to be reclaimed by nature. Protruding from one corner of the plinth was a lion's head, its mouth open to reveal a void from which a stream of spring water must once have flowed. On the ground beneath sat a stone bowl, half-filled with stale rainwater. As Jess watched, a blue-breasted fairy wren flew down to perch upon the edge of the bowl; after observing Jess for a moment, the little bird made a graceful dive across the surface of the water, skimming himself clean before disappearing once more into the folds of the garden.

Sage and I hadn't been here together since that first day of the school vacation, the morning after Ellen jumped from the car, and it was as if nature had reclaimed it, the laurel and rhododendron pushing farther into the space, erasing our time here together. I stood up and tried to break off the branches with the cigarette just hanging from my mouth, the smoke wafting into my eyes. I sat down and kept smoking. It made me feel sick and light-headed. Sage had started buying Marlboro Lights. Menthol, she said, was for old ladies. I reminded her of this when she continued to steal Charlotte's menthols and smoke them. The stick sap from the rhododendron on my fingers had grubbed the cigarette paper, and I wondered if it was poison to inhale. The nectar of the rhododendron, laurel, and azalea are all toxic. I smoked anyway, even when the sapped paper sizzled against the ember tip. The rhododendron blossoms around me were dead and hung in bowed clusters, their vibrant purple faded, pale in death. Seven or eight pods hung from the tips of threadlike stalks. Each pod, I'd read, contained over five hundred seeds. I tried to calculate what that meant per cluster and for every bush. millions. I looked at the petals all around me on the forest floor; I was sitting on the possibility of billions of future rhododendrons.

This place is the opposite of Sara’s neighborhood. The house is falling apart—not all shiny and perfect like hers—but the land is alive. There are mature trees with lineages far deeper and more beautiful than my own. And the ancient rhododendron near the porch? It’s such a far cry from South Prescott with its tract housing and shitty duplexes, all that cement and chain-link and urban decay.

Is there something uniquely dangerous about beans? I posed this question to plant scientist Ann Filmer, recently retired from the University of California, Davis. In her reply, she included a link for a website she had put together on poisonous garden plants. I was taken aback to note that nine of the 112 plants in Category 1 (Major Toxicity: “may cause serious illness or death”) were currently, or had recently been, growing in our yard: oleander, lantana, night-blooming jasmine, lobelia, rhododendron, azalea, toyon, pittosporum, and hellebore. Another, the houseplant croton, was growing in an orange ceramic pot in my office. In other words, it’s not beans. It’s plants, period. If you can’t flee or maul or fire a gun, evolution may help you out with other, quieter ways to avoid being eaten. Over the millennia, natural selection favors eaters who turn up their proboscis at you, and eventually they all steer clear.

Such was Mr. Satterthwaite's romance--a rather tepid early Victorian one, but it had left him with a romantic attachment to Kew Gardens, and he would often go there to see the bluebells, or, if he had been abroad later than usual, the rhododendrons, and would sigh to himself, and feel rather sentimental, and really enjoy himself very much indeed in an old-fashioned, romantic way.

I was on what seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating of the hail-stones.

Jeremy walked in a great shrubbery of rhododendrons where Charing Cross Station had been and in a rose-garden over the deep-buried foundations of Scotland Yard.

Life wasn’t a shadow. It was a beautiful, warm, many-voiced reality, full of omnibuses and orchestras and the smell of earth after rain.

Giselle sat crouched inside, her body a mess of flowering bruises: irises, peonies, pharynxia, sheep's tongue blossoms, violets—rhododendron in some places. Beneath skin, blood seeped from inflamed vessels.

Some dogs can be caught by allergies due to seasonal plants. And, your furry friend can manifest these allergies in the form of skin issues. In general, you can find your dog itching more than usual, this includes licking or chewing their paws, excessive sneezing, rubbing their face and ears, or outright scratching. Even some springtime plants such as rhododendron and azaleas can be toxic and life-threatening for your dog, make sure that you don’t have such plants in your garden. Moreover, if your dog is showing the symptoms of allergy, consult your vet. Most of the dogs love this season and you can find them extremely excited to go out and explore. In this excitement, your cat or dog can take their nose closer to bees or other insects and can be stung. Allergies and reactions can differ from one dog to the other and it is advisable to act fast to avoid further complications. Get in touch with your vet and explain the symptoms. Birds can be readily available for your cat Cats are, without a doubt, opportunistic hunters and they can eat a wide variety of critters such as birds, rats, mice- just to name a few. If your cat is allowed outside, you can try these tips so that your kitty doesn’t bring some birds to your doorsteps. Fastening a bell to your cat’s collar can provide birds with early warning and they can fly away before it’s too late. If your cat is well-fed, it can help reduce the urge to hunt. If you feed birds, don’t feed them on the ground, elevate bird feeders enough that your cat can’t reach or give the birds sufficient time to realize the threat. Keep your dog up-to-date on medication These pesky insects and parasites can emerge when the ground becomes wet and soft. Make sure that your dog is up-to-date with all the required medications including flea and tick medications. If your dog gets a tick, you can wear gloves and grab the tick closer to your dog’s skin. Ensure that the grip is not too hard, pull up in swift movements. Now, disinfect the bitten area and wash your hands thoroughly. The bottom line Spring is a wonderful season and providing you are aware of these common tips, there’s every chance it will be a happy and healthy one for you and your pets too. If you find these tips useful, please share them with others.

My darling, why didn't you say so before? You know, I sometimes wonder," she added, turning to Ann, "what it would be like to have no children." "Jolly dull, " said John. "you'd be bored stiff. What would you do all day?" "Well I could read a little," said Mrs Gayford, rather vaguely, "really good books, you know, and the Times Literary Supplement. I used to be very fond of it.

In spring, Granny would send me off to pick bluets, violets, and windflowers. As the weeks passed, she’d ask for yellow lady’s slippers and bleeding hearts, then roses and white rhododendron clusters that grew along the stream. She’d always seem to know the day when the mayflies danced and died. When I’d come back from whatever venture she’d sent me on, she’d talk about how life was precious.

Behind her the rhododendron was at its peak, blossoms shining like pink stars above her head. The air was sweet with the scent of new leaves, and as I came down the path, a rufous hummingbird flashed between the camellia bush and the old cedar tree, a tiny arrow of scarlet and green.

Under The Octagon by Stewart Stafford Under the octagon of glass and steel, A careworn man sits at his desk and sighs, He longs to leave this place of chilly lies, And find a hidden treasure that is real. He knows a code that he can’t reveal, A sepulchre where the Holy Grail lies, He found it with his providence eyes, A numinous and haunting view that heals. He takes a penknife from his drawer and peels, His finger till he sees a key inside, He wraps his wound and leaves without a guide, He runs towards the garden, full of zeal. He finds the rhododendrons and the birch, He digs beneath the wisteria with care, Cracks open the tomb, and discovers there, A golden bird sitting upon its perch. "Back! Thou tomb-raiding thief." It squawks, its voice so stern, "Cleanse thyself, endeavour to learn. Do not touch the Grail without belief!" Caving in, he seals the grave, The aureate avian conveys his thanks, The plumage rejoining arcane ranks, The man seeks out a confessor's nave. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved

Harmful to Cats and Dogs. The list was broken down into two categories. Toxic to Felines: Amaryllis, Autumn Crocus, Azaleas and Rhododendrons, Bleeding Hearts, Castor Bean, Chrysanthemum, Cyclamen, English Ivy, Lilies, Oleander, Peace Lily, Spanish Thyme, Tulip and Narcissus bulbs, Yews Toxic to Canines: Castor Bean or Castor Oil Plant, Cyclamen, Dumb Cane, Hemlock, English Ivy, Mistletoe, Oleander, Thorn Apple, Yews

You are looking well,” Ellen said, dusting off her long unused skills with small talk. “I’m tired. Road weary, dusty, and probably scented accordingly. You, however, look to be blooming.” “You mustn’t flatter me, Mr. Windham,” Ellen replied, not meeting his gaze. He offered his arm, as he had once long ago, and she took it gingerly. “I did steal a nap after my supper.” “Did a handsome prince come kiss you awake?” he asked, matching his steps to hers. “Darius is convinced we’ve fallen into the land of the fairy, what with the rhododendrons, the bats in the attic, and the air of neglect.” “You’re less than three miles from that thriving enclave of modern civilization, Little Weldon. I will disabuse your friend of his wayward notions.” “Oh,

Come here,” Cam said in a sleep-darkened voice, drawing back the bed linens. A laugh stirred in her throat. “Absolutely not. There is too much to be done. Everyone is busy except you.” “I intend to be busy. As soon as you come here. Monisha, don’t make me chase you this early.” Amelia gave him a severe glance as she obeyed. “It’s not early. In fact, if you don’t wash and dress quickly, we’ll be late to the flower show.” “How can you be late for flowers?” Cam shook his head and smiled, as he always did when she said something he considered to be gadjo nonsense. His gaze was hot and slumberous. “Come closer.” “Later.” She gave a helpless gasp of laughter as he reached out with astonishing dexterity, snaring her wrist in his hand. “Cam, no.” “A good Romany wife never refuses her husband,” he teased. “The maid—” she said breathlessly as she was pulled across the mattress, and clasped against all that warm golden skin. “She can wait.” He unbuttoned her robe, his hand slipping past the lace, fingertips exploring the sensitive curves of her breasts. Amelia’s giggles died away. He knew so much about her—too much—and he never hesitated to take ruthless advantage. She closed her eyes as she reached up to the nape of his neck. The clean, silky locks of his hair slipped through her fingers like liquid. Cam kissed her tender throat, while one of his knees nudged between hers. “It’s either now,” he murmured, “or behind the rhododendrons at the flower show. Your choice.

I thought you said it didn’t matter either way?” said Harry, with a bitter laugh. “Not to you anyway.” “I shouldn’t have said that,” said Scrimgeour quickly. “It was tactless —” “No, it was honest,” said Harry. “One of the only honest things you’ve said to me. You don’t care whether I live or die, but you do care that I help you convince everyone you’re winning the war against Voldemort. I haven’t forgotten, Minister. . . .” He raised his right fist. There, shining white on the back of his cold hand, were the scars which Dolores Umbridge had forced him to carve into his own flesh: I must not tell lies. “I don’t remember you rushing to my defense when I was trying to tell everyone Voldemort was back. The Ministry wasn’t so keen to be pals last year.” They stood in silence as icy as the ground beneath their feet. The gnome had finally managed to extricate his worm and was now sucking on it happily, leaning against the bottommost branches of the rhododendron bush. “What is Dumbledore up to?” said Scrimgeour brusquely. “Where does he go when he is absent from Hogwarts?” “No idea,” said Harry. “And you wouldn’t tell me if you knew,” said Scrimgeour, “would you?” “No, I wouldn’t,” said Harry. “Well, then, I shall have to see whether I can’t find out by other means.” “You can try,” said Harry indifferently. “But you seem cleverer than Fudge, so I’d have thought you’d have learned from his mistakes. He tried interfering at Hogwarts. You might have noticed he’s not Minister anymore, but Dumbledore’s still headmaster. I’d leave Dumbledore alone, if I were you.

Once she stopped to pluck a pink rhododendron flower that was just coming into bloom and took it back to the ward with her, twirling it in her hands.

When we reached the prayer flags and a pile of rocks that marked the highest point on the pass, the view was brilliant. There was hardly a cloud in the sky. To the south we could see rolling foothills: the gentle ups and downs that we’d walked through. Some of the hillsides were red or purple with rhododendron blossoms. To the west and east there was a muddle of ridges and spurs. To the north, there were several mighty snow-capped himals. The real Himalayan giants were mostly east of where we stood. We were a very long way from anywhere. We were a very long way from help.

she would cross an empty moor, and the road would slip down into a tiny valley thick with rhododendrons, where enviable gardens were still verdant with hydrangeas and the dangling ballerina blossoms of fuchsia.

Tom and Stella were sitting on their favourite mound of grass on ‘The Island’. The Island was a cluster of four oak trees in the centre of the garden skirted by rhododendron bushes. Stella twirled her friendship bracelet – a present from Hannah when they had left. ‘Neither time nor distance will break our bond,’ Hannah had said dramatically when she’d given it to her. How much those words meant now!

You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment. Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It's not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can't even remember your name.